Are charismatics off course?
Hinojosa, Juan-Lorenzo
ately expensive reissue as reissues go, yet you will pay less for its thirty-two selections than you would have paid for the original 78s over forty years ago. Take that, Compact Disc!) From...
...It is highly dogmatic and universalistic in its attitude, with little or no attempt at a correlation of Christian sources and contemporary questions and experiences...
...We (bishops, priests, theologians, and religious educators) are purveying, Martin tells us, a limpid, watery, weak soup of the Gospel which cannot butleave people malnourished and hardly prepared to live as witnesses in the word today...
...But this is merely a reflection of the challenge which faces the whole church...
...The attitude of the Christian toward the non-christian world is basically negative and the Christian sees other religions as basically false...
...A good example of this is how he handles the question of pluralism in the church...
...There was nothing doctrinal which finally relegated the Montanist movement to an entry in the church's catalog of heresies...
...Again, there is truth in what Martin says, but it is what he fails to grasp that vitiates his vision...
...a addition, in this position, "theology proceeds from above, from religious documents which are norms above space and time...
...Take Montanism, for example...
...If one's conversion leads to a rigid and closed dogmatism, I suspect one has succumbed to one of the major temptations of religion -- a lust for certainty...
...This is what faces the charismatic movement...
...The above view is characteristic of Martin's book and quite prevalent in major sectors of the Catholic charismatic movement...
...Johnson was sought for the first Spirituals to Swing concert but was murdered before its promoters could locate him...
...It is the answers that he gives which are inadequate, because his analysis of the problem is faulty...
...On the other hand, there is a type of certainty which is deadly to true faith...
...The first position coincides with Marfin's horizon...
...CERTAINTY, THE WORLD & FUNDAMENTALISM Are charismatics off course...
...It is an overbearing and inflated ego which assigns to itself the "fullness" of the Spirit and a concession of slight spirituality to the rest of the church...
...Basically, Martin sees the church in the grips of a tremendous crisis of truth: Where has our certainty gone...
...JUAN-LORENZO HINOJOSA teaches at the Oblate School of Theology in Texas and is the director of the Lay Ministry Institute there...
...Martin's absolutism is truly frightening, especially because there is a very wide diffusion of his teaching via print, audio-cassette, and videotape...
...Jesus Christ is seen as the exclusive mediator of God's salvific activity...
...The issue of how Martin understands the "signs of the times" most starkly highlights the flaw underlying his analysis...
...It is a far cry from the "we have it all" stance I sense in Martin...
...Of all the major movements it has spread by far the fastest and to the most Catholics worldwide...
...Articles by him have appeared in the Seattle Times and other publications) PLURALISM...
...The contemporary zeitgeist is one without windows...
...All sides were recorded in 1936 and 1937...
...Thus we imbibe from our environment a kind of latent or implicit heresy...
...For Martin, the reason for the crisis of truth is straightforward...
...This is why the church must listen to what the contemporary world says to it (allowing the world to question the church...
...For our purposes, I will only highlight two...
...There is a type of certainty that arises out of fear...
...He tells us that there are many in the church who exhibit and promote "a relativistic and skeptical attitude to truth...
...Yes, I believe Martin raises some of the right questions...
...Yet they had been performing for years and already had behind them an astonishing body of recorded work...
...Will the charismatic movement do likewise...
...Ultimately, this subverts the very heart of religion...
...There is probably no better point of entry into the question than the recent book by Ralph Martin titled The Crisis of Truth (Servant Publications, $10.95,250 pp...
...Yet under his swift fingers a popular tune is often tickled into revealing more character than you had thought it possessed...
...In other words, we find ourselves prisoners of modemity...
...The second volume (PC-30034) is worth having, though it lacks the comprehensive documentation that accompanies this collection...
...As demonstrated by these recordings from the early 1940s, Tatum does not depart from a melody so much as investigate it -- sniff out the alleys, skip over the rooftops, throw open the windows, rummage through the closets...
...MARK PRUETF (Mark Pruett is a free-lance writer living in Eugene, Oregon...
...The new pluralism is not a radical departure, but rather the recovery of an earlier situation in the church which bespoke a great vitality...
...What he fails to grasp is that there is a valid plurality of Christologies and ecclesiologies in the church...
...That's it...
...Likewise, Father Jean Danitlou could say at the time of the council, "God speaks through time...
...Perhaps it was the Montanists' reliance on personal access to revelation untempered by humility...
...It was an enthusiastic movement which emphasized the charisms and had an apocalyptic bent...
...The extent of God's saving grace and love is limited to Christians, and therefore, it is necessary to bring all into the church...
...He is creating division in the name of the Lord...
...God speaks at the same time through time and through the church...
...From Spirituals to Swing (Vanguard VSD-47/48...
...Unfortunately, Marfin's own Christological and ecclesiological positions exclude a true pluralism...
...Commonweal: 150...
...We must be so transformed and formed in Christ that there is no capitulation to modernity...
...Fundamentalism is precisely a denial of contemporary consciousness by an escape into a naive realism...
...Yes, much of the church has collapsed God's Word in Scripture into the human word through which it comes...
...F INALLY, despite disclaimers by Martin, the charismatic movement is infested with fundamentalism...
...The mainstream of Roman Catholic theology does not share Martin's viewpoint...
...Do we have the courage to be challenged so profoundly...
...Highlights on this set include Lester Young on clarinet behind Helen Humes's silken vocal, two piano solos by James P. Johnson, the collaboration of boogie-woogie pianists Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis, and Pete Johnson, blues vocals by Big Bill Broonzy, Ida Cox, and Joe Turner, and the stunning virtuosity of trumpeter Hot Lips Page and guitarist Charlie Christian...
...God's word is being undermined and silenced...
...And what is this mainstream to which much of the movement has become marginal...
...In this book, Martin raises the right questions but, unfortunately, falls quite short of the mark with his answers...
...one record...
...But in as much as the church closes itself off from the world as a 9 March 1984:149 source of God's word, as I am afraid Martin would have it, to that extent will the dialogue of God with God collapse in the other direction...
...When .these Carnegie Hall concerts were recorded, in 1938 and 1939, most of the great jazz and blues artists on the program were still unknown to the general public...
...He urges people to pull back support, financial and otherwise, from those Catholic institutions and people who, for him, have left the "true" path...
...two records...
...On any number of fronts the church has capitulated to modernity...
...There are several basic positions with regard to Christ and church which are taken when we, as Christians, encounter modernity...
...Some were successful in facilitating this reform and some were not...
...Even these brief observations should suffice to highlight the marginality of the Christological and ecclesiological position taken by Martin and many in the Catholic charismatic movement...
...The contemporary church's newfound relationship to the world is more than an "attempt to overcome an excessively negative att i t u d e . . , in order for the church to gain a hearing...
...Montanism failed in its efforts to reform and revitalize the church...
...JUAN-LORENZO HINOJOSA T HE CATHOLIC charismatic movement: source of perplexity, joy, consternation, and zeal...
...This stems from an erroneous reaction to the fundamental pastoral thrust of the Second Vatican Council -the important and worthwhile attempt to overcome an excessively negative attitude towards the world, in order to regain a hearing for the church in an increasingly secularized society...
...It is the realization that God is active in the world, and in fact, that God's own Word is present for us as individuals and as a church in the contemporary world -- be it in the social sciences or in movements of liberation...
...This often does take the shape of God's Word being treated in such a way that its " . . . reliability is questioned, its authority denied, its clarity obscured...
...For the sake of our life and of our authenticity, that dialogue must continue...
...two records...
...The mainstream accepts the position that God's saving grace and love is not limited simply to those identified with the church...
...This is Martin's fundamental thesis...
...M ANY OF THE PROBLEMS Martin sees in the church are real and critical, but he overgeneralizes...
...Robert Johnson: King of the Delta Blues Singers (Columbia CL-1654...
...Other religions rather than seen as absolutely false, are viewed as either relatively false, preChristian, or relatively true...
...What has happened to our missionary thrust...
...His position is clearly stated in the following: "One of the most notable sources of confusion in the life and mission of the church in recent years has been an unclear, sometimes confused, and often naive attitude toward the world...
...The church "tries to discern in the events, the needs, and the longings which it shares with other men of our time what may be genuine signs of the presence of the purpose of God" ( Gaudium et Spes...
...The non-Christian world is a place of sin and error...
...Seven albums, seven steps to -- but enough rhapsodizing...
...In Why the Church...
...Since its inception some twenty years ago, it stands apart in the depth of its impact on the church community...
...In as much as there is a capitulation of the church to the world, then there is no dialogue...
...We are in a battle for naming reality, and to an alarmingly I I I I great extent, transcendence has collapsed into a rampant immanentism...
...A further issue that Martin's book raises is that of certainty...
...Art Tatum: Masterpieces (MCA 2-4019...
...It is this phrase that captures most clearly the new understanding of the church's relationship with the world which emerges out of the Second Vatican Council...
...Of course, in a fluid but vital situation, there will be elements of the church which use this situation for their own ends...
...1 cannot deal with all of the issues Martin raises, Commonweal: 148 but I will briefly deal with four: pluralism, certainty, the use of the "signs of the times" as a category for theologizing, and fundamentalism...
...Although many of my liberal friends might disagree, I believe his thesis is fundamentally correct...
...In Peter Berger's apt metaphor, a world with a place for transcendence is a world with windows...
...Rather, God's grace and love are present to all people through Christ, or at least grace and love are offered to all people, but manifest most fully and clearly in Christ...
...This heart is a radical openness to God and to a life of risk...
...You'll sing any further praises yourself...
...But this does not negate the value of a situation of valid pluralism in the church, for it is out of such a fluid and rich environment that the theology and lived faith for the coming age will be born...
...The history of spirituality is replete with movements and people which felt the church needed reform...
...It began making the distinction, found today among some charismatics and in fact made by Martin in his book, between those "natural" or "carnal" Christians and those in the church who are the "spirituals...
...He does not take seriously the fact that Scripture is both a human and a divine word...
...In time with the music, I hope...
...Johnson's raw, powerful voice carves its way through a lyric while his guitar, like one of the demons he sang about, howls, spits, and goads him unmercifully...
...It has been a source of spiritual awakening for countless people -- some of whom remain active in the movement -- others who do not...
...Their position militates against any true plurality...
...Tatum was a capable composer but, like many jazz pianists, was content to record mostly standards...
...it is a dialogue of God with God...
...The Scriptures, which are often read in an inadequate proof-text manner, are normative over contemporary experience...
...and flourished for some time afterward...
...Rather, there was something quite intangible about the movement which left a disquiet...
...This was a movement which began in the second century A.D...
...I agree with Martin that this is a danger to the church and something of real pastoral concern...
...As Schineller writes, in this position, " . . . Scripture and Christian dogma are the final and absolute criteria of truth, unassailable by non-Christian viewpoints or even by contemporary experience...
...There are too many echoes of the mentality which finally led Montanism astray in segments of the Catholic charismatic movement for it to escape notice...
...And it must be true dialogue - - one in which we, as church, are willing to change fundamentally...
...edited by Walter Burghardt and William Thompson, Paulist Press), J. Peter Schineller has described this outlook in an essay on which my own analysis draws...
...He is also a wonderful accompanist, as shown in his elegant backing of singer Joe Turner on six blues sides included here...
...People have misunderstood and purposefully misinterpreted the Second Vatican Council...
...But Marlin finally collapses the human word into God's Word...
...It is something much more fundamental...
...The Montanists were the "pneumatici," or spirit-filled and the rest of the church were the "psychici" or carnal ones...
...On the other hand, we must be secure enough in ourselves to be challenged by God's Word in the world...
...Again, Schineller's article is helpful...
...Those theologians who signed the Hartford appeal said no differently...
...As Avery Dulles can say in his important article "Unmasking Secret Infidelities," "Many of the unspoken assumptions of our culture are out of harmony with Christian faith...
...This is all history...
...It is also one in which much of the church has taken up residence...
...It has also precipitated the exit from the Catholic church of large numbers of people, including some deacons and priests, this often in order to join (or start their own) either evangelical or pentecostal churches...
...Here, I want to reflect on the movement today, and to take stock, for many of the questions facing the church are configured within the ranks of the Catholic charismatics...
...The attitude toward the world is much more open and receptive, as exemplified in the Second Vatican Council Documents...
...There was little sense among them of the possibility of being in error...
...Each position is exclusive of the others...
Vol. 111 • March 1984 • No. 5
